I hope to have time for a longer comment on Monday, but for now some quick clarifications (I work at FP and currently lead the climate work):
1. Linch’s comment on FP funding is roughly right, for FP it is more that a lot of FP members do not have liquidity yet (it is a pledge on liquidity events).
2. I spent >40h engaging with the original FP Climate Report as an external expert reviewer (in 2017 and 2018, before I joined FP in 2019). There were also lots of other external experts consulted.
3. There isn’t, as of now, an agreed-to-methodology on how to evaluate advocacy charities, you can’t hire an expert for this. Orgs like FP, SoGive, OPP, try to evaluate methodologies to do this kind of work, but there is no single template. The approach we chose is, roughly, cluster-based reasoning and integrating lots of different considerations and models. I discuss this in more detail here (second part of the comment).
4. As discussed in that comment, lots of expert-judgments and scientific results are reflected in the recommendation, but the ultimate cost-effectiveness estimates come from combining them. Crucially, something like a CATF recommendation, does not depend on a single cost-effectiveness estimate that we describe as highly uncertain where ever we talk about it, but on (a) different ways to estimate cost-effectiveness, (b) most importantly, crucial considerations about the climate space and solutions (e.g. the main reason we think CATF is very high impact is because they focus on neglected solutions that can have large leverage for global decarbonization, see e.g. discussed here, with our view of what’s important / effective / neglected driven by years of research + lots of conversations with experts), (c) have a long successful track record, and (d) continuous investigations over time (> 80h this year alone) investigating CATF’s current programs, funding margins, and plans.
5. Skepticism from external people on cost-effectiveness of philanthropy in climate comes, I think, in a large part from the false promises of cheap offsets that lack environmental integrity. Because, when offsets cost < 1 USD/t they are not credible (and indeed, they aren’t) whereas credible offsets are much more expensive (> 100 USD/t). So the fact that you can be much more cost-effective when you are risk-neutral and leverage several impact multipliers (advocacy, policy change, technological change, increased diffusion) is hard to explain and not intuitively plausible.
”Linch’s comment on FP funding is roughly right, for FP it is more that a lot of FP members do not have liquidity yet”
I see, my mistake! But is my estimate sufficiently off to overturn my conclusion?
” There were also lots of other external experts consulted.”
Great! Do you agree that it would be useful to make this public?
“There isn’t, as of now, an agreed-to-methodology on how to evaluate advocacy charities, you can’t hire an expert for this.”
And the same ist true for evaluating cost-effectiveness analyses of advocacy charities (e.g. yours on CATF)?
”So the fact that you can be much more cost-effective when you are risk-neutral and leverage several impact multipliers (advocacy, policy change, technological change, increased diffusion) is hard to explain and not intuitively plausible.”
Sure, thats what I would argue as well. Thats why its important to counter this skepticism by signalling very strongly that your research is trustworthy (e.g. through publishing expert reviews).
I hope to have time for a longer comment on Monday, but for now some quick clarifications (I work at FP and currently lead the climate work):
1. Linch’s comment on FP funding is roughly right, for FP it is more that a lot of FP members do not have liquidity yet (it is a pledge on liquidity events).
2. I spent >40h engaging with the original FP Climate Report as an external expert reviewer (in 2017 and 2018, before I joined FP in 2019). There were also lots of other external experts consulted.
3. There isn’t, as of now, an agreed-to-methodology on how to evaluate advocacy charities, you can’t hire an expert for this. Orgs like FP, SoGive, OPP, try to evaluate methodologies to do this kind of work, but there is no single template. The approach we chose is, roughly, cluster-based reasoning and integrating lots of different considerations and models. I discuss this in more detail here (second part of the comment).
4. As discussed in that comment, lots of expert-judgments and scientific results are reflected in the recommendation, but the ultimate cost-effectiveness estimates come from combining them. Crucially, something like a CATF recommendation, does not depend on a single cost-effectiveness estimate that we describe as highly uncertain where ever we talk about it, but on (a) different ways to estimate cost-effectiveness, (b) most importantly, crucial considerations about the climate space and solutions (e.g. the main reason we think CATF is very high impact is because they focus on neglected solutions that can have large leverage for global decarbonization, see e.g. discussed here, with our view of what’s important / effective / neglected driven by years of research + lots of conversations with experts), (c) have a long successful track record, and (d) continuous investigations over time (> 80h this year alone) investigating CATF’s current programs, funding margins, and plans.
5. Skepticism from external people on cost-effectiveness of philanthropy in climate comes, I think, in a large part from the false promises of cheap offsets that lack environmental integrity.
Because, when offsets cost < 1 USD/t they are not credible (and indeed, they aren’t) whereas credible offsets are much more expensive (> 100 USD/t). So the fact that you can be much more cost-effective when you are risk-neutral and leverage several impact multipliers (advocacy, policy change, technological change, increased diffusion) is hard to explain and not intuitively plausible.
Hi Johannes!
I appreciate you taking the time.
”Linch’s comment on FP funding is roughly right, for FP it is more that a lot of FP members do not have liquidity yet”
I see, my mistake! But is my estimate sufficiently off to overturn my conclusion?
” There were also lots of other external experts consulted.”
Great! Do you agree that it would be useful to make this public?
“There isn’t, as of now, an agreed-to-methodology on how to evaluate advocacy charities, you can’t hire an expert for this.”
And the same ist true for evaluating cost-effectiveness analyses of advocacy charities (e.g. yours on CATF)?
”So the fact that you can be much more cost-effective when you are risk-neutral and leverage several impact multipliers (advocacy, policy change, technological change, increased diffusion) is hard to explain and not intuitively plausible.”
Sure, thats what I would argue as well. Thats why its important to counter this skepticism by signalling very strongly that your research is trustworthy (e.g. through publishing expert reviews).